New York Times
Justices Decline to Hear Appeal From Texas Seeking to Restore Voter ID Law
January 24, 2017
by Adam Liptak
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rejected on Monday an appeal from Texas officials seeking to restore the state’s strict voter ID law.
As is the court’s custom, its brief order in the case, Abbott v. Veasey, No. 16-393, gave no reasons for turning down the appeal. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued an unusual statement explaining that the Supreme Court remains free to consider the case after further proceedings in the lower courts.
The Texas law, enacted in 2011, requires voters seeking to cast their ballots at the polls to present photo identification, like a Texas driver’s or gun license, a military ID or a passport. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled that the law is racially discriminatory.
The Texas law was at first blocked under Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which required some states and localities with a history of discrimination to obtain federal permission before changing voting procedures. After the Supreme Court effectively struck down Section 5 in 2013 in Shelby County v. Holder, an Alabama case, Texas officials announced that they would start enforcing the ID law.
After a two-week trial in 2014, Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Federal District Court in Corpus Christi struck down the law on Oct. 9 in a 147-page opinion. She said that it had been adopted “with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose” and that its effect was to disenfranchise “a disproportionate number of African-Americans and Hispanics.”
In 2015, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, vacated part of the ruling concerning the law’s purpose but affirmed the part concerning its effect. Last July, the full Fifth Circuit largely adopted the panel’s distinctions and reasoning, and it returned the case to the trial court to consider an appropriate remedy.
Texas officials nonetheless asked the Supreme Court to review the appeals court’s ruling immediately. The people and groups challenging the law, the officials said, “presented no evidence that the law resulted in diminished minority political participation or prevented even a single person from voting.”
The challengers responded that about 600,000 registered voters in Texas, or about 5 percent of all registered voters in the state, lacked the required forms of ID. The law, they said, “disproportionately affects minority voters at a statistically significant rate.”
On Monday, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the case would be better suited for Supreme Court review after the lower courts completed their work.
Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, said he was disappointed that the court “did not immediately take our case.”
“Chief Justice Roberts made it very clear that the case will be an even stronger posture for Supreme Court review after further proceedings in lower courts,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement. “Texas enacted a common sense voter ID law to safeguard the integrity of our elections, and we will continue to fight for the law.”
J. Gerald Hebert of the Campaign Legal Center, which represents voters challenging the law, said he was pleased that “the justices recognize that this case does not merit review at this time.”
“Texas, which ranks poorly in voter participation, should work to ensure that every eligible voter in the state is able to cast a ballot going forward,” Mr. Hebert said in a statement.